Saturday, November 29, 2014

Saudi’s Dangerous Gambit

Charles Payne

11/29/2014 12:01:00 AM

The biggest news for the United States stock market and
American consumers happened on Thanksgiving in a far off desert kingdom.
Saudi Arabia has taken the big gambit of not cutting production which
means downward pressure on oil will continue, and that means less
revenue for them. Why would a nation that gets 90% of their revenue from
oil allow the price to plunge? I’ve said it several times, but I’m more
convinced this is their (last) chance to crush, or at least
derail/stall, America’s fracking miracle.
It’s a war without
bullets, but make no mistake, it's also about no prisoners. According to
the Wall Street Journal, the Eagle Ford Region is the only drilling
region still able to be profitable with oil prices at a 4-year low of
approximately $69.27 per barrel.

Drilling Region

Breakeven Begins

Permian Basin

$75

Bakken

$75

Eagle Ford

$65

Mississippi Lime

$83

Texas Panhandle

$81

Niobrara

$78

Scoop

$91

Tuscaloosa Marine

$86

In the meantime, this is party time for American consumers as gasoline is poised to get even cheaper.
Early
reports from retail land shows robust foot traffic at malls and
shopping centers, but not sure how much people are buying, although it’s
clear retailers are getting smarter and smarter about coaxing people to
malls in the internet era and getting them to buy stuff.
Please
note, due to the shortened trading session, there will not be an
afternoon commentary. We hope everyone has a safe and wonderful weekend.

Nowadays, it seems like everyone claims
they foresaw the magnitude of the collateral damage that hit after the
U.S. housing bubble burst.
In reality, most people ignored the major warning signs.
In July 2007, Bear Stearns disclosed that two of its credit hedge
funds with exposure to subprime mortgages had lost nearly all of their
value.
Yet the S&P 500 didn’t peak until October 2007, well after
problems in the mortgage market had begun to spread. And even then, most
economists and strategists were clueless as to what would happen next.
Well, what if I told you that an even larger housing bubble is in the process of bursting?
Just like before, very few people are paying attention… And once
again, everyone will claim they saw the collateral damage coming.
On a year-over-year basis, the average new-home price in China
declined by 2.5% in October. Home prices fell in 67 of the 70 cities
tracked by the government in October from a year earlier.
Prices were also down 1.1% in September, the first annual decline in almost two years.
With deterioration in the housing market, it’s no wonder China’s central planners blinked.
Last Friday, the People’s Bank of China unexpectedly cut benchmark
lending and borrowing rates. It was the central bank’s first rate cut in
more than two years.
But there’s even more to the story…
As China’s economic growth rate slows, we’re starting to get a
glimpse of the ugly details concerning China’s epic credit expansion,
which has fueled the housing boom over the past several years.
It turns out that loan guarantees, in which companies back loans to
other firms, are starting to wreak havoc. These guarantee chains are
causing cascading failures and transmitting stresses throughout the
banking system.
It’s estimated that around a quarter of the $13 trillion in total
loans outstanding in China are backed by promises from other companies,
individuals, or dedicated guarantee companies.
These guarantees remind me of the problems surrounding the monoline
insurance companies, which guaranteed U.S. subprime mortgages.
Unsurprisingly, it seems as though loan guarantees are a fixture of
rapid and unsustainable credit expansions.
Nonetheless, fresh Chinese central bank stimulus has a lot of investors bullish on China’s stock market.

Speculating on Red

Furthering this bullishness is the development of a new pathway for more foreign investment in China’s local shares.
The Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect is a pilot program that links
the stock markets in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Although mainland Chinese
stock purchases are still capped, the hope is that further global
integration of China’s equity markets will lead to significant capital
inflows.
Obviously, everyone wants to be among the first in. Fund assets for the Deutsche X-Trackers Harvest CSI 300 China A-Shares ETF (ASHR[1]) is taking off, and the ETF now trades at around a 5% premium to net asset value (NAV), which is unusual for an ETF.
Meanwhile, the lesser-known Morgan Stanley China A Share Fund (CAF[2]), a closed-end fund, still trades at a 7.8% discount to NAV.
I expect CAF to eventually trade at a significant premium to its NAV, just like ASHR.
Much like in the United States circa 2007, it will take time for the
markets to come to grips with the enormity of the problems in China.
Until then, stimulus and hope will trump common sense.
Whereas the U.S. mortgage market and banking system was ground zero
for the credit crisis in 2008-2009, Asia will be the epicenter of the
next credit crisis.
Just imagine if the Federal Reserve had been ultra-stimulative
throughout 2007. Speculation and leverage would have reached even
greater heights before the crisis – with even more disastrous
consequences, of course.
This is the situation that China finds itself in today. Its housing
bubble is trying to correct itself, but the central planners are going
to fight it by encouraging even more malinvestment.
Safe (and high-yield) investing,
Alan Gula, CFA

Mini is all the rage this season. At least it is on the now Hong Kong-owned London Metal Exchange (LME).
Three new mini futures contracts for aluminum, zinc, and copper are
launching on December 1. Priced in Chinese renminbi, these mini
contracts carry a big punch and have a few distinct advantages over
their larger brethren.
Retail investors would be wise to explore this new option, but they should also take note of the implications.
You see, the Chinese want to move the U.S. dollar aside and make the
renminbi the world’s reserve currency. And these new mini contracts are
just a small part of their diabolical plan.

Tiny Is Taking Over

The size of each mini contract is just five metric tonnes (MT),
smaller than the standard LME nonferrous metal contract, which is 25 MT.
And they have three distinct advantages over the traditional contract.
First, mini contracts are designed for the retail markets or smaller
industrial hedgers that find the standard LME contract too large.
Second, they add greater liquidity to the industrial metals market,
allowing more participants to trade. Greater liquidity means a
heightened level of trading volume for global industrial metals, which
is a good thing for the market’s participants. And while mini contracts
already exist on the LME, none were traded in renminbi. This meant that
prior to the launch of these hybrid minis, you had to put on both a
metals trade and a renminbi trade. The minis facilitate this transaction
by removing that additional step.
And third, the launch of any new financial instruments tends to
create interesting arbitrage opportunities – in this case, between Hong
Kong and other industrial metals futures markets around the globe, such
as London, Singapore, and New York.
This window will likely narrow quickly due to the efficiency of
currency and metals markets, meaning the mini-contract trend will far
outlive the arbitrage.
The mini contract’s specifications are as follows:
The contracts will be based on the settlement prices of LME futures
and will be settled in cash, not with physical metal like the standard
LME contracts.
The final settlement price will be the Official Settlement Price
published by the LME. This will be converted to the renminbi equivalent
using spot USD/ renminbi pricing (published by the Treasury Markets
Association in Hong Kong at 11:15 AM Hong Kong Time).
Also, it’s important for investors to note that the last trading day
will be two business days before the third Wednesday of the spot month,
and that the schedule will follow the Hong Kong Futures Exchange.
If the launch proves successful, down the road we could see minis in
other metals – both industrial and precious – traded in renminbi.
The close ties with the Hong Kong Futures Exchange are not
surprising, considering the Exchange now owns the LME. But mini futures
do mark a change in China’s positioning of the renminbi in the world’s
markets.

China Tries to Take the Reins

As I alluded to before, there are some interesting implications
stemming from these new contracts as they relate to China and its role
in international trade.
China’s dominance over metals trading became evident in 2012, when
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd. gained instant access to
commodities trading by buying the LME for the equivalent of $2.16
billion.
The transaction made sense, since China is the world’s largest
consumer of industrial metals – representing approximately 40% of global
consumption.
China has also been working to make the renminbi more competitive
with the U.S. dollar. In fact, China seeks to make the renminbi the reserve currency of the world!
How will it try to do this? Well, China will continue to gradually
open up its capital account, make offshore renminbi liquidity more
easily available, and sign up more renminbi trading centers – it has
opened two recently in London and Frankfurt.
On top of that, in March of 2014, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC)
announced a historic economic policy shift. China realized that it needs
to let its currency’s value be market determined rather than tightly
managed, and thus the PBOC widened its band around the renminbi’s
central value relative to the U.S. dollar from 1% to 2% in either
direction.
This act created major volatility in the currency markets and in
China’s capital flow and trade reserve levels, eventually leading to
currency intervention by the PCOB.
But despite these efforts, the U.S. dollar will continue to be the
world’s reserve currency because of three crucial characteristics: 1)
It’s the most widely used and accepted currency around the world, 2) it
is free floating against other currencies (unlike renminbi, which trades
in a tight band against the U.S. dollar), and 3) it can be printed to
increase supply in times of easy monetary policy.
Good investing,
Shelley Goldberg

Friday, November 28, 2014

The
RSIS Working Paper series presents papers in a preliminary form and
serves to stimulate comment and discussion. The views expressed in this
publication are entirely those of the author(s), and do not represent
the official position of RSIS. This publication may be reproduced
electronically or in print with prior written permission obtained from
RSIS and due credit given to the author(s) and RSIS. Please email RSISPublications@ntu.edu.sg for further editorial queries.

No. 285 dated 26 November 2014

Fixing Global Finance: Unfinished BusinessBy Stephen Grenville

The
2008 financial crisis was hugely damaging. The focus of reform has been
on increasing banks’ required capital. Together with the other measures
taken, this makes a repetition of 2008 less likely. However, the crisis
also taught us that financial markets do not work as well as we
thought. Financial innovation has made the markets more volatile,
short-term focused and more pro-cyclical. Not much has been done to
address this issue. This paper suggests that the government-guaranteed
banking sector should be separated much more clearly from the rest of
the financial sector, which should be more explicitly identified as a
risky sector. This separation would change the way the financial sector
is managed (with conservative management returning to the banking
sector). Such beneficial changes would reduce the size of the financial
sector, which currently attracts too many of our best brains.

Click on the following link to download the working paper

http://www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/WP285.pdfBioDr Stephen Grenville
is a Non-resident Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International
Policy. He works as a consultant on financial sector issues in East
Asia. Between 1982 and 2001 he worked at the Reserve Bank of Australia,
for the last five years as Deputy Governor and Board member. Before
that, Dr Grenville was with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development in Paris, the International Monetary Fund in Jakarta,
the Australian National University and the Department of Foreign Affairs
in Canberra. His special interests are in monetary policy and financial
development in the Asian emerging economies. He has written extensively
on capital flows, recognising the serious policy challenges that arise
from the volatile nature of these flows on economies that have not yet
developed deep and resilient financial sectors. He has also written on
the 2008 financial crisis and the reform efforts since then. His
interests include the international economic institutions (particularly
the International Monetary Fund and the Asian institutions). He is
member of the Lowy Institute’s G20 Studies Centre. More broadly, he
blogs weekly on the Lowy Institute’s The Interpreter web-site on a range
of current international economic issues and is a regular contributor
to the Nikkei Asian Review.

Church
leaders are upset after a recent article in The New York Times revealed
that the Internal Revenue Service can use undercover agents disguised
as members of the clergy as a means to gather privileged information.

Following the Times' report last weekend that over 40 federal
agencies use undercover agents disguised as attorneys, doctors, news
media and other positions to gain access to privileged information,
church leaders are appalled to find out that IRS agents are also allowed
to pose as clergy, even though the agency doesn't have a crime-fighting
function that warrants such a use of undercover tactics.

In a Tuesday interview with The Christian Post, Director of the
Christian Defense Coalition, Rev. Patrick Mahoney, said he thinks it's
an "absolute disgrace" that the IRS is allowed use undercover agents
disguised as clergy. He added that he couldn't think of any justifiable
reasons as to why the agency should be allowed to disguise agents as
clergy.

"It is an absolute disgrace that IRS undercover agents can pose as
members of the clergy. It is the role of government to protect
religious freedom and the first amendment, and not to use it to gather
information and spy on American citizens," Mahoney said. "One has to ask
why is the IRS using undercover agents to gather information posing as
clergy. Why is this even part of their mandate? What does the IRS have
to do with this?"

Mahoney and fellow church leaders that he's spoken with in the
days since the Times' article was published have expressed concern that
the IRS could possibly use undercover investigators disguised as clergy
to help enforce the HHS' mandate that requires group and employer health
insurance plans to cover all FDA-approved contraceptives and
abortion-inducing drugs, thus forcing churches and other faith-based
organizations to act against their beliefs.

"The red flag that's raised by all the ministers and faith leaders
that I talked to over the last 48 hours is it would seem to have to do
with healthcare and the Affordable Care Act, and churches complying with
that," Mahoney added. "Is the IRS investigating churches and ministers
who've said they cannot, in good faith, comply with Obamacare? These are
very serious questions when you have a government agency sending
undercover agents in as clergy to gather information and spying on
American citizens.

"I cannot think of a more serious issue and I think the IRS needs to explain why they are doing this?" Mahoney said.

The IRS issued a statement to the Times stating that senior
officials within the agency "are not aware of any investigations where
special agents have posed as attorneys, physicians, members of clergy or
members of the press specifically to gain information from a privileged
relationship." However, the IRS declined to say whether undercover
agents have posed in roles in efforts to gain information that's not
considered "privileged."

Although other federal agencies use undercover agents, like the
FBI or the Department of Justice, they have to obey strict guidelines
that provide tight oversight on their undercover operations. The IRS,
however, doesn't have to abide by such guidelines and its undercover
operations have far more latitude.

"It makes it even more disturbing when you realize that the IRS
has wide latitude, even wider than the Department of Justice," Mahoney
asserted.

According to IRS undercover operations guidelines, the permittance
of IRS agents to be allowed to go undercover in roles such as clergy is
relatively new. In November 2012, a provision to the IRS undercover
operations guidelines was made allowing for agents to disguise as clergy
and other privileged professionals.

Mahoney claims the 2012 changes to the IRS undercover operations
guidelines has President Barack Obama's fingerprints all over it.

"When one considers that the IRS, under President Obama, has had
serious charges of using the IRS for political intimidation and
harassment on people that the White House considers it opposes, like
conservative groups, religious organizations, this just adds another
level to those charges and concerns," Mahoney explained. "If the
president allowed this to be put in, it does raise even much more
serious concerns, particularly churches complying with the Affordable
Care Act. One has to seriously look at the possibility that this whole
role was put into place to address churches struggling with the HHS
mandate and Obamacare."

Mahoney said when the newly elected Republican-majority in
Congress takes effect on Jan. 3, he and other clergy members will lobby
committees with IRS oversight to act and prevent the agency from being
able to go undercover as clergy in the future.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/November26/265.html#zV0P74Z5333UxfDr.99

"Repent
ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when
the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and
he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the
heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which
God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world
began" (Acts 3:19-21, KJV).

The return of Christ is contingent upon "the times of restitution
of all things." The word times is in the plural form, meaning "a series
of events" linked to restitution. The word restitution is similar to the
word restoration. The Greek word for restitution (apokatastasis) was
used to describe the Jews' return to Israel from Egypt with Moses and
their return to Israel after the Babylonian captivity.

In both cases the Hebrew nation was released from bondage,
returned to their land and brought restoration to the land through
agriculture and farming (Jer. 27:22; Joel 2:25). Christ will return
after an order of restoration occurs.

The biblical prophets also predicted a series of restorations that
will unfold prior to the return of the Messiah. When these predictions
begin to come to pass, it is a major witness that the closing out of the
end of the age is at hand and the kingdom of the Messiah is over the
horizon.

The first major event would be the reestablishing of Israel as a
nation. Over 100 years before Israel was reborn on May 14-15, 1948,
Bible scholars who accepted the literal interpretation of the
restoration prophecies began writing and teaching that the Jews must
return to a restored nation called Israel prior to the Lord's return.

One such man was Professor S.W. Watson, who in 1888 taught that
three things must occur before Christ could return. First, Israel would
again be a nation. Second, Jerusalem must be in the hands and control of
the Jews, and, finally, the Jews would be returning from all nations
back to the Promised Land.

In 1912, A.B. Simpson wrote a book titled The Coming One, in which
he stated: "Then there is the promise of their [Israel's] restoration.
This is to be in two stages: first, national and then spiritual. The two
stages are represented by Ezekiel in the vision of the valley of dry
bones."

In 1940 Harry Rimmer wrote a prophetic book titled The Coming War
and the Rise of Russia. In it he mentions 14 things that must occur
prior to the coming of Christ. He stated that the Jews would be back in
Palestine and will have Jerusalem back. He predicted that there would be
a great war that would drive the Jews back to Palestine. He also spoke
of Hitler dividing Germany and how Germany would later be united again.

In the 1930s and 1940s, a great Bible scholar, Finis Dake, author
of the Dake's Annotated Bible, spent thousands of hours researching the
Scriptures and writing personal notes and commentaries on each verse. In
Isaiah 35, the prophet Isaiah predicted a time when the barren deserts
of Israel would blossom as a rose and fill the world with fruit (Is.
35:1; see also Is. 27:6). At the time of Mr. Dake's research, most of
Palestine was either a swamp or a desolate, dry wilderness with little
or no vegetation. In this setting, Dake commented on the 2,500-year-old
prediction by Isaiah that Israel's deserts would blossom and fill the
world with fruit: "A complete restoration or reestablishment. It refers
to the Millennium when Christ will reign 1,000 years. No prophecy about
the coming of the Lord can be fulfilled until the Jews are back in their
land."

In the 1930s and early 1940s, Dake understood two facts: that no
prophecy about the coming of the Lord could be fulfilled until the Jews
were back in their land (Israel), and that the blossoming of the desert
was to be taken literally and not as some spiritual allegory. In other
words, the dry land would one day become fruitful. He only missed one
part of his interpretation. He placed the timing of this fulfillment
during the thousand-year reign of Christ (Rev. 20:4), not during the
time of the end. When his Bible notes were written, the Jews were still
scattered among the nations and were being persecuted by the Nazis. The
nation of Israel was nonexistent, and the land was called Palestine and
was under British mandate.

When examining prophetic Scripture, these men and others like them
took the prophecies about Israel's restoration literally and not
spiritually or allegorically. They predicted a day when the Jews would
return and rebuild the places of old.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/November26/264.html#WU1gVWyyaDWqu1Ql.99

The
Islamic State terrorist organization now has at least 12 known military
allies, operating in nine countries outside of Iraq and Syria, that
have publicly pledged their allegiances to the caliphate of ISIS leader
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

As Islamic State leadership continues to call on extremists
worldwide to wreak havoc on the West, NYMag.com's Daily Intelligencer
reports that the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC) has
identified 12 international militia organizations that are now
affiliating their efforts with the Islamic State's jihad and could help
expand the group's caliphate.

Militia allies in Pakistan, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Indonesia,
Lebanon, Philippines, Jordan and Gaza/Israel have all announced some
sort of cooperation with the Islamic State and al-Baghdadi. Many of
these organizations were recently affiliated with Al Qaeda and have
since switched to ISIS allegiances over the summer and into the fall.

In the latest edition of ISIS' English language online magazine,
Dabiq, the group details its plans for its expansion into North Africa
and the Arabian Peninsuala.

"On the 17th of Muharram 1436 (Muslim year), the world heard
announcements from the mujāhidīn of the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen, Sinai,
Libya, and Algeria, pronouncing their [allegiances] to the Khalīfah of
the Muslims, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi," the Dabiq article states. "All of
them announced uniformly: We call the Muslims everywhere to give bay'ah
to the Khalīfah and support him, in obedience to Allah and actualization
of the unheeded obligation of the era."

In the North African country of Libya, a new group founded at the
beginning of 2014, Islamic Youth Shura Council, has already made
significant headway for the Islamic State by seizing control of the
Mediterranean coastal town of Derna in April. Although the group
initially pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda when it was first established,
the group formally switched its allegiance to ISIS in June. In October,
the group announced Derna as an official ISIS outpost, making it a rare
ISIS-controlled town outside of Iraq and Syria.

"It is incumbent on us to support this oppressed Islamic State
that is taken as an enemy by those near and those far, among the
infidels or the hypocrites, or those with dead souls alike," a statement
issued by Islamic Youth Shura Council states.

TRAC Editorial Director Veryan Khan told Daily Intellegencer that
she believes the Islamic Youth Shura Council could have a huge impact on
luring Libya's inland extremists considering the nature of the
country's volatile political climate.

In Algeria, a group that once held close ties to Al Qaeda
leadership called Jund al-Khilafa (Soldiers of the Caliphate), issued
their pledge of allegiance to ISIS in September. This particular militia
group held personal ties to Osama Bin Laden and current Al Qaeda leader
Ayman al-Zawahiri. The group's leader, Gouri Abdelmalek, issued a
statement claiming Al Qaeda "has deviated from the true path."

No more than two weeks after Jund al-Khilafa publicized its ISIS
affiliation, the group beheaded a French man in the name of the Islamic
State to avenge for France's participation in U.S.-Coalition airstrikes
against ISIS.

"The Caliphate soldiers have actually beheaded on the Islamic State's behalf," Khan said.

As was reported earlier in November, the Sinai-based Ansar Beit
al-Maqdis in Egypt has pledged its support to ISIS and currently
contains about 1,000 fighters. Since Egypt's Islamist president, Mohamed
Morsi, was kicked out of power in July of 2013, the leadership of Ansar
Beit al-Maqdis felt that it was in their best interest to pledge
loyalty to ISIS in hopes that the Islamic State's leaders would provide
more supplies to help the group defeat Cairo's military leadership.
After the group pledged its allegiance, it was renamed to Wilayat Sinai,
which means the governance of Sinai.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis also has a branch that operates in Gaza,
which has previously conducted attacks against Israel. According to
TRAC, the group claimed responsibility for launching rockets into Israel
in July. Since pledging its allegiance to ISIS, the Gaza branch of
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has changed its name to al-Dawla al-Islamiyya,
which in English simply means "the Islamic State."

Exanding into Asia via affiliates in Pakistan, a country that
consists of 97 percent muslims and has a low tolerance for blaspheming
against Allah and the Prophet Muhammad, multiple militia organizations
have expressed their ISIS allegiance.

Last Monday, a former Pakistani Taliban splinter group called
Jundallah pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State. Jundallah joins
other Pakistani Taliban militia's such as Tehreek-e-Khilafat and Jamaat
al-Ahrar, who pledged allegiance over the summer. All three of the
former Taliban groups had close ties with Al Qaeda leadership and as the
Intelligencer points out, Al Qaeda is starting to lose much of its
affiliated support due to the emergence of ISIS.

"[ISIS] is our brothers, whatever plan they have we will support them," a Jundallah spokesperson said.

In the Philippines, the group Abu Sayyat pledged allegiance to the
Islamic State over the summer and has been attempting to create its
Islamic governance within the archipelago. The group successfully
received a $5 million ransom payment after they kidnapped and threatened
to behead two German captives.

In mid July, Ashorut Tauhid, an Indonesian militia group based in
Java, issued its allegiance to ISIS when the group's arrested leader
pledged from inside his jail cell. However, the decision to pledge
allegiance to ISIS was to the dismay of many of the group's top members,
who have since left the group.

In Lebanon, the group that took credit for the 2013 bombing of the
Iranian Embassy in Beirut, Free Sunnis of Baalbek Brigade, issued its
allegiance to ISIS through a Twitter post in June.

The Sons of the Call for Tawhid and Jihad, a Jordan-based youth
militia, that is believed to have thousands of members, denounced Al
Qaeda leadership in July and offered their support to ISIS.

Although TRAC's analysis identified just 12 international militia
organizations, TRAC holds that there could possibly be more groups that
have pledge allegiance to ISIS but have not done so publicly.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/November26/263.html#8P0ipuUbq6vYPZVO.99

Nearly
half of Americans now believe that the recent surge in natural
disasters is the result of biblical "End Times" than climate change, and
more than two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants hold this belief,
according to a new study.

While only 44 percent of Americans agreed in 2011 that natural
disasters are evidence of the apocalypse, their number has now increased
to 49 percent, the Public Religion Research Institute reported, quoting
results of a new poll.

Especially white evangelical Protestants are more likely — 77
percent — to attribute the severity of recent natural disasters to the
End Times than to climate change, added the poll on religion and the
environment.

African-American Protestants were close behind white evangelicals
in attributing natural calamities to the end times. But, they are most
likely to acknowledge climate change at the same time.

However, the study also found that only 39 percent of Americans
believe that God would not allow humans to destroy the earth, while 53
percent disagree.

The poll added that 57 percent of Americans believe that God holds
humans responsible for animals, plants and other resources which are
not just for human benefit. By contrast, about one-third of Americans
say that God gave humans the right to use animals, plants and all other
resources of the planet solely for their own benefit.

The study found that Hispanic Catholics are among the most
concerned faith groups about climate change, almost at par with
religiously unaffiliated Americans.

The study showed that 54 percent of Americans say that science and
religion are often in conflict, but substantially fewer believe that
science clashes with their own religious beliefs.

Nearly 60 percent of Americans say that science does not conflict
with their religious beliefs, while roughly 40 percent disagree, saying
that science sometimes conflicts with their religious beliefs.

These attitudes have remained stable over the last few years, the study noted.

The poll also said that while 46 percent of Americans believe the
earth is getting warmer and blame it on human activity, 25 percent say
the global temperature is rising but due to natural fluctuations in the
earth's environment or uncertain causes. Besides, 26 percent of
Americans say there is no concrete evidence that the earth's temperature
has been rising over the past few decades.

Americans who identify with the Tea Party are even more skeptical
about the existence of climate change than Republicans, the study added,
saying that less than one-quarter of Tea Party members believe in
climate change and 53 percent of them do not believe so.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/November26/262.html#lmOcuzT6UldY0tqW.99

If
the United States and Russia fought a nuclear war, who would win? You
might be surprised by the answer. Under the Obama administration, the
rapidly aging U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal has been shrinking.

Meanwhile, the Russians have been developing an entirely new
generation of bombers, submarines and missiles that have the capability
of delivering an absolutely crippling first strike. At this point, most
Americans consider a full-scale nuclear war to be inconceivable. But
in Russia attitudes are completely different.

To the Russians, the United States is enemy number one these days
and the Russians are feverishly preparing for a potential military
showdown.

Of course the Russians don’t actually want to have to resort to
nuclear war. Such an event would be an unspeakable horror for the
entire globe. But if one does happen, the Russians want to make sure
that they are the ones that come out on top.

A lot of Americans are still operating under the faulty assumption
that the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” still applies. The
thinking was that both sides had so many nuclear missiles that a launch
by one side would guarantee the destruction of both parties.

But since that time, so much has changed.

For one, the U.S. nuclear arsenal is far, far smaller than it was
back then. Back in 1967, the U.S. military possessed more than 31,000
strategic nuclear warheads. Now, we only have 1,642 deployed, and that
number is scheduled to be further reduced to about 1,500.

Sadly, reducing the size of our nuclear arsenal by close to 95
percent is not enough for anti-nuke crusader Barack Obama. He has
spoken of unilaterally reducing the size of our strategic nuclear
arsenal down to just 300 warheads.

During this same time period, the Russians have been developing
some very impressive stealth delivery systems which have the capability
of hitting targets inside the United States within just minutes of an
order being issued. This is particularly true of their
submarine-launched missiles. The newest Russian subs have the ability
to approach our coastlines without us even knowing that they are there.
If the Russians came to the conclusion that war with the United States
was unavoidable, an overwhelming first strike using submarine-based
missiles could potentially take out nearly our entire arsenal before we
even knew what hit us. And if the Russians have an anti-ballistic
missile system that can intercept the limited number of rockets that we
can launch in return, they may be able to escape relatively unscathed.

In order for “mutually assured destruction” to work, we have to
see the Russian missiles coming and have enough time to order a launch
of our own. Thank to emerging technologies, the balance of power has
fundamentally shifted. The old way of thinking simply does not apply
anymore and the Russians understand this.

The following are 10 signs that Russia is preparing to fight (and win) a nuclear war with the United States…

#1 Russia is spending an enormous amount of money to develop the
PAK DA Strategic Bomber. Not a lot is known about this stealth bomber
at this time. The following summary of what we do know comes from an
Australian news source…

Russia’s answer to the B-2 “Spirit”, this next-generation
strategic bomber is intended to be almost invisible to radar and capable
of carrying a huge array of conventional and nuclear missiles. Little
else is known other than its expected service date: 2025.

#2 Russian nuclear bombers have been regularly buzzing areas in
northern Europe and along the coast of Alaska. The Russians appear to
be brazenly testing NATO defenses. Here is just one recent example…

Russian strategic nuclear bombers carried out air defense zone
incursions near Alaska and across Northern Europe this week in the
latest nuclear saber rattling by Moscow.

Six Russian aircraft, including two Bear H nuclear bombers, two
MiG-31 fighter jets and two IL-78 refueling tankers were intercepted by
F-22 fighters on Wednesday west and north of Alaska in air defense
identification zones, said Navy Capt. Jeff A. Davis, a spokesman for the
U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command. Two
other Bears were intercepted by Canadian jets on Thursday.

#3 Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu says that Russian
nuclear bombers will now conduct regular patrols “in the western
Atlantic and eastern Pacific, as well as the Caribbean and the Gulf of
Mexico“.

#4 Russia is constructing an anti-ballistic missile system which
will supposedly be superior to anything that the U.S. currently has…

Currently under development, the S-500 missile is intended to be
capable of intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles when
combined with radar input from the likes of the new A-100 AWACS
aircraft. It is supposed to be able to track and shoot at up to 10
supersonic targets at any one time at heights of up to 40km.

A Russian Northern Fleet nuclear submarine on Wednesday fired a
test intercontinental missile from the Barents Sea to the country’s far
eastern Kura Range on the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Russian Defense
Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.

“Within the frameworks of testing the reliability of marine
strategic nuclear forces, the Tula [nuclear submarine] launched a Sineva
intercontinental ballistic missile from the Barents Sea to the Kura
Range [in Kamchatka],” the statement says.

The RSM-54 intercontinental ballistic missile Sineva (NATO code name SS-N-23 Skiff) is part of the D-9RM launch system.

The D-9RM launch system equipped with RSM-54 missiles was put into
service in 1986. The production of the RSM-54 was halted in 1996 but
after three years, the Russian government resumed the production of a
modernized version of the missile.

#6 Russia already possesses super silent nuclear attack submarines
that are virtually undetectable when submerged. In a previous article,
I discussed how the U.S. Navy refers to these virtually undetectable
subs as “black holes“…

Did you know that Russia is building submarines that are so quiet
that the U.S. military cannot detect them? These “black hole” submarines
can freely approach the coastlines of the United States without fear of
being detected whenever they want. In fact, a “nuclear-powered attack
submarine armed with long-range cruise missiles” sailed around in the
Gulf of Mexico for several weeks without being detected back in 2012.
And now Russia is launching a new class of subs that have “advanced
stealth technology”. The U.S. Navy openly acknowledges that they cannot
track these subs when they are submerged. That means that the Russians
are able to sail right up to our coastlines and launch nukes whenever
they want.

#7 Russian media outlets are reporting that 60 percent of all
Russian nuclear missiles will have radar-evading capability by 2016…

Russia’s Defense Ministry plans to complete the rearmament of
Strategic Missile Forces within six years. “By 2016, the share of new
missile systems will reach nearly 60%, and by 2021 their share will
increase to 98%. At the same time the troop and weapon command systems,
combat equipment will be qualitatively improved, first of all — their
capabilities for the suppression of antimissile defense will be built
up,” Defense Ministry’s RVSN spokesman Colonel Igor Yegorov told
ITAR-TASS on Friday.

#8 For the first time ever, Russia has more strategic nuclear warheads deployed than the United States does…

For the first time, Russia, which is in the midst of a major
strategic nuclear modernization, has more deployed nuclear warheads than
the United States, according to the latest numbers released by the
State Department.

Russia now has 1,643 warheads deployed on intercontinental
ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy
bombers. The United States has 1,642, said the fact sheet released
Wednesday.

The warhead count for the Russians, based the Sept. 1 report
required under the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START),
shows an increase of 131 warheads since the last declaration on March 1.
The U.S. reported a warhead increase of 57 during the same period. It
is not clear why the warhead numbers increased.

#9 Russia has a massive advantage over the United States and NATO when it comes to tactical nuclear weapons…

As for tactical nuclear weapons, the superiority of modern-day Russia over NATO is even stronger.

The Americans are well aware of this. They were convinced before that Russia would never rise again. Now it’s too late.

To date, NATO countries have only 260 tactical nuclear weapons in
the ETO. The United States has 200 bombs with a total capacity of 18
megatons. They are located on six air bases in Germany, Italy, Belgium,
the Netherlands and Turkey. France has 60 more atomic bombs. That is
pretty much it. Russia, according to conservative estimates, has 5,000
pieces of different classes of TNW – from Iskander warheads to torpedo,
aerial and artillery warheads! The US has 300 tactical B-61 bombs on its
own territory, but this does not change the situation against the
backdrop of such imbalance.

#10 Russian President Vladimir Putin has initiated a huge “weapons
modernization program” that is projected to cost the equivalent of 540
billion dollars…

Putin said Russia’s weapons modernization program for 2016-2025
should focus on building a new array of offensive weapons to provide a
“guaranteed nuclear deterrent;” re-arming strategic and long-range
aviation; creating an aerospace defense system and developing
high-precision conventional weapons.

He would not elaborate on prospective weapons, but he and other
officials have repeatedly boasted about new Russian nuclear missiles’
capability to penetrate any prospective missile shield.

The Kremlin has bolstered defense spending in the past few years
under an ambitious weapons modernization program that runs through 2020
and costs the equivalent of $540 billion.

Meanwhile, the Chinese have been investing heavily in this kind of technology as well.

In fact, just the other day the Chinese successfully tested a new submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile…

China’s JL-2 second-generation intercontinental-range
submarine-launched ballistic missile, which has the ability to reach the
continental USA, is already believed to be deployable by the People’s
Liberation Army, reports Huanqiu, the Chinese-language website of the
nationalistic Global Times tabloid.

The Julang-2 — literally “Giant Wave 2″ — has reached a
preliminary level of proficiency, according to the US-China Economic and
Security Review Commission in its report to US Congress on Nov. 20.

Most Americans do not believe that any of this is a concern whatsoever.

Most Americans just assume that a full-scale nuclear war is virtually impossible.

But the truth is that a successful first strike against the United
States is more possible today than it ever has been before.

Hopefully the American people will wake up to this reality before it is too late.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/November26/261.html#X3oIrvbvVjal6X17.99

Eric King: “James, as you know French leader Marine Le Pen has sent a letter to the French central bank demanding the repatriation of French gold held abroad as well as an end to gold sales. It’s astonishing this happened so quickly because just days ago you predicted other countries would follow the Dutch repatriation:

Turk’s astonishingly accurate prediction 4 days ago: “And the people (or entities) who own paper gold are getting nervous about not being able to convert their paper gold into physical gold, and that’s (already) resulting in a very tight physical market. Gold’s main purpose today as far as any country is concerned is if a currency collapses in that country because of too much government debt, mismanagement by the central bank or whatever, they are going to need that gold in order to rebuild the currency system.

In fact, there was an important announcement by the Dutch Finance Minister who said, ‘After 2008, the Dutch central bank actually looked at reestablishing the guilder if the euro collapsed -- if they couldn’t keep the euro together. And you’ve got to believe that all of the European countries have these contingency plans. And the key element of any contingency plan is getting control of the gold that you own. That means bringing it back to a safe place where you know the gold really exists and that means putting it back in the vaults of the central bank of the country that owns that gold. So the fact that the Dutch are doing this is very bullish. But I think, Eric, you are going to see (even) more countries looking to get their gold back.”

Eric King continues: “I guess the announcement by Le Pen comes as no surprise to you since you just predicted other countries would look to get their gold back.”

Turk: “I was surprised, Eric, that it happened so quickly after I predicted it. But it’s not just countries that are nervous about whether they are going to get their metal back. There are also major entities out there who are owed significant amounts of gold, and they are getting very nervous about whether they will ever see their physical gold again. So I think this squeeze that we are seeing for physical metal is going to continue at least through year end.

Eric King: “So the fact that France now wants their gold back, it did surprise you in terms of how quickly it has unfolded.”

Turk: “Yes, but when you get near a panic in the market this is what starts to happen. We are not quite at panic levels just yet, but we are on the edge of it. These entities understand that there is a fractional reserve gold system in place and it has a lot more paper promises to deliver gold, than actual physical gold that exists.

So the only way that gold is going to come available and remove the backwardation, which deepened once again today, is to have a much higher gold price than what we are seeing today. We have the last of the options expiring tomorrow. Once that is completed, I’m very optimistic about where the price of gold is headed.”

Eric King: “Do you have any idea of how high the price of gold will go as the run on physical gold intensifies and the U.S. and London based fractional reserve gold Ponzi scheme collapses?”

Turk: “It’s incredibly hard to predict because anything can happen to the price of gold at that point. What we do know is that it’s going to be a hell of a lot higher than what we are currently seeing quoted.”

Greyerz: “Eric, the Swiss Gold Initiative vote is now only days away. The outcome of this vote is still of course very uncertain. There have been so many undecided voters and they will ultimately be the deciding factor. Meanwhile the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and the government have conducted a massive propaganda campaign against the initiative.

This is completely against the normal protocol of this type of vote but the establishment has totally disregarded this. The reason they have taken such unprecedented steps to prevent a yes outcome is because they are desperate....

Continue reading the Egon von Greyerz piece below...

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“They are desperate because they are extremely concerned that the disastrous investments of the SNB will be exposed. Switzerland has pegged its currency to the euro at 1.20. But over the last 50 years the Swiss france has strengthened against most of the world’s currencies. And with a strong currency Switzerland has had a strong economy and a low inflation rate.

Also, Swiss industry has done very well with the strong currency. But sadly the race to the bottom in global currencies reached Switzerland 3 years ago. That is when the Swiss National Bank decided to peg the franc to the euro. This will be seen as a disastrous policy in the fullness of time. They claimed this was to protect Switzerland’s industries and jobs. But this totally ignored the history of a strong currency benefitting Switzerland.

The problem is that a currency peg doesn’t work because a central banks says so. It requires massive intervention. This has created an explosion in the SNBs balance sheet since 2011, from 100 billion to 500 billion francs. This represents a staggering 80 percent of Swiss GDP. There is no other central bank in the industrialized world with such an inflated balance sheet.

Back in the 1990s Switzerland had around 40 percent of reserves in gold. Today that figure has plunged all the way down to 8 percent. Over half of Switzerland’s gold was sold at the bottom of the market. So far this has cost Switzerland over 30 billion francs. This is why the Swiss Gold Initiative will prevent any future gold sales. Any central bank that sells half its gold at the bottom should be banned from any future sales.

The Swiss National Bank has printed over 450 billion francs in order to make risky investments. They are now heavily exposed to the foreign currency markets, and they are short 470 billion Swiss francs. So they are sitting on a massive speculative position. This is the reason they can’t afford to lose the Swiss Gold Initiative. It would mean an attack on the Swiss franc/euro peg. This would cost the central bank tens of billions.

And if the currency position really went against them they would have to take a massive loss or print an enormous amount of money to counter the trend. But to trade almost 500 billion Swiss francs in the market is almost impossible. This is why the Swiss National Bank is campaigning daily because they stand to lose their excellent reputation with the Swiss people.

The SNB has always been a bastion of security and so the Swiss people haven’t realized that their national bank has gone from a position of 40 percent gold backing to a 500 billion franc currency gamble. It is virtually guaranteed that there will be major currency losses in the next few years. And this will happen whether the Swiss Gold Initiative wins or not. Sadly the SNB has followed the example of most Western central banks and become a highly-leveraged hedge fund rather than a custodian of solidity and prudence.

But, Eric, despite the problems Switzerland now faces, I still think it’s a great country. As an example, Switzerland is the only real remaining democracy in the world where the people have a major say in what happens with the government, and the Swiss Gold Initiative is just one demonstration of this. This is how the people can change the Constitution with a private initiative.”

Greyerz added: “Looking at the gold market, gold is clearly in an uptrend and has most certainly bottomed. And all of the factors for gold are bullish as well as the technicals. China and India continue to buy more than the entire annual global gold production. Russia is also buying and of course they will never sell as some people are indicating.

And the global money printing will escalate dramatically in 2015, not only in Japan but also in Europe. And in the U.S. QE will resume with a vengeance. This will mean a very unstable world economy in 2015, but it will also mean a very strong gold market.”

The
mysterious disappearance of 18-year-old Hannah Graham on September 13,
2014, has become easy fodder for the media at a time when the news cycle
is lagging. After all, how does a young woman just vanish without a
trace, in the middle of the night, in a town that is routinely lauded
for being the happiest place in America, not to mention one of the most
beautiful?

Yet Graham is not the first girl to vanish in America without a
trace—my hometown of Charlottesville, Va., has had five women go missing
over the span of five years—and it is doubtful she will be the last. I
say doubtful because America is in the grip of a highly profitable,
highly organized and highly sophisticated sex trafficking business that
operates in towns large and small, raking in upwards of $9.5 billion a
year in the U.S. alone by abducting and selling young girls for sex.

It is estimated that there are 100,000 to 150,000 under-aged sex
workers in the U.S. The average age of girls who enter into street
prostitution is between 12 and 14 years old, with some as young as 9
years old. This doesn’t include those who entered the “trade” as minors
and have since come of age. Rarely do these girls enter into
prostitution voluntarily. As one rescue organization estimated, an
underaged prostitute might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year
period of servitude.

This is America’s dirty little secret.

You don’t hear much about domestic sex trafficking from the media or
government officials, and yet it infects suburbs, cities and towns
across the nation. According to the FBI, sex trafficking is the fastest
growing business in organized crime, the second most-lucrative commodity
traded illegally after drugs and guns. It’s an industry that revolves
around cheap sex on the fly, with young girls and women who are sold to
50 men each day for $25 apiece, while their handlers make $150,000 to
$200,000 per child each year.

In order to avoid detection by police and cater to male buyers’
demand for sex with different women, pimps and the gangs and crime
syndicates they work for have turned sex trafficking into a highly
mobile enterprise, with trafficked girls, boys and women constantly
being moved from city to city, state to state, and country to country.
The Baltimore-Washington area, referred to as The Circuit, with its I-95
corridor dotted with rest stops, bus stations and truck stops, is a hub
for the sex trade.

With a growing demand for sexual slavery and an endless supply of
girls and women who can be targeted for abduction, this is not a problem
that’s going away anytime soon. Young girls are particularly
vulnerable, with 13 being the average age of those being trafficked. Yet
as the head of a group that combats trafficking pointed out, “Let’s
think about what average means. That means there are children younger
than 13. That means 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds.”

Consider this: every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex
industry. In Georgia alone, it is estimated that 7,200 men (half of them
in their 30s) seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls each month,
averaging roughly 300 a day. It is estimated that at least 100,000
children—girls and boys—are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every
year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked
each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are
runaways, and still others are sold into the system by relatives and
acquaintances.

As one news center reported, “Finding girls is easy for pimps. They
look on MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks. They and their
assistants cruise malls, high schools and middle schools. They pick them
up at bus stops. On the trolley. Girl-to-girl recruitment sometimes
happens.” Foster homes and youth shelters have also become prime targets
for traffickers.

With such numbers, why don’t we hear more about this? Especially if,
as Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
insists, “this is not a problem that only happens in New York and Los
Angeles and San Francisco. This happens in smaller communities. The only
way not to find this in any American city is simply not to look for
it.”

Unfortunately, Americans have become good at turning away from things
that make us uncomfortable or stray too far from our picture-perfect
images of ourselves. In this regard, we’re all complicit in contributing
to this growing evil which, for all intents and purposes, is out in the
open: advertising on the internet, commuting on the interstate,
operating in swanky hotels, taking advantage of a system in which the
police, the courts and the legislatures are more interested with
fattening their coffers by targeting Americans for petty violations than
actually breaking up crime syndicates.

Writing for the Herald-Tribune, reporter J. David McSwane
has put together one of the most chilling and insightful investigative
reports into sex trafficking in America. “The Stolen Ones” should be
mandatory reading for every American, especially those who still believe
it can’t happen in their communities or to their children because it’s
mainly a concern for lower income communities or immigrants.

As McSwane makes clear, no community is safe from this danger, and
yet very little is being done to combat it. Indeed, although police
agencies across the country receive billions of dollars’ worth of
military equipment, weapons and training that keeps them busy fighting a
losing battle against marijuana, among other less pressing concerns,
very little time and money is being invested in the fight against sex
trafficking except for the FBI’s annual sex trafficking sting, which
inevitably makes national headlines for the numbers of missing girls
recovered.

For those trafficked, it’s a nightmare from beginning to end. Those
being sold for sex have an average life expectancy of seven years, and
those years are a living nightmare of endless rape, forced drugging,
humiliation, degradation, threats, disease, pregnancies, abortions,
miscarriages, torture, pain, and always the constant fear of being
killed or, worse, having those you love hurt or killed. A common thread
woven through most survivors’ experiences is being forced to go without
sleep or food until they have met their sex quota of at least 40 men.
One woman recounts how her trafficker made her lie face down on the
floor when she was pregnant and then literally jumped on her back,
forcing her to miscarry.

Holly Austin Smith was abducted when she was 14 years old, raped, and
then forced to prostitute herself. Her pimp, when brought to trial, was
only made to serve a year in prison. Barbara Amaya was repeatedly sold
between traffickers, abused, shot, stabbed, raped, kidnapped,
trafficked, beaten, and jailed all before she was 18 years old. “I had a
quota that I was supposed to fill every night. And if I didn't have
that amount of money, I would get beat, thrown down the stairs. He beat
me once with wire coat hangers, the kind you hang up clothes, he
straightened it out and my whole back was bleeding.”

As McSwane recounts: “In Oakland Park, an industrial Fort Lauderdale
suburb, federal agents in 2011 encountered a brothel operated by a
married couple. Inside ‘The Boom Boom Room,’ as it was known, customers
paid a fee and were given a condom and a timer and left alone with one
of the brothel’s eight teenagers, children as young as 13. A 16-year-old
foster child testified that he acted as security, while a 17-year-old
girl told a federal judge she was forced to have sex with as many as 20
men a night.”

One particular sex trafficking ring that was busted earlier in 2014
caters specifically to migrant workers employed seasonally on farms
throughout the southeastern states, especially the Carolinas and
Georgia, although it’s a flourishing business in every state in the
country. Traffickers transport the women from farm to farm, where
migrant workers would line up outside shacks, as many as 30 at a time,
to have sex with them before they were transported to yet another farm
where the process would begin all over again.

What can you do?

Call on your city councils, elected officials and police departments
to make the battle against sex trafficking a top priority, more so even
than the so-called war on terror and drugs and the militarization of law
enforcement.

Insist that law enforcement agencies in the country at all levels,
local, state and federal, funnel their resources into fighting the crime
of sex trafficking. Stop prosecuting adults for victimless “crimes”
such as growing lettuce in their front yard and focus on putting away
the pimps and buyers who victimize these young women.
Educate yourselves and your children about this growing menace in our
communities. The future of America is at stake. As YouthSpark, a group
that advocates for young people points out, sex trafficking is part of a
larger continuum in America that runs the gamut from homelessness,
poverty, and self-esteem issues to sexualized television, the
glorification of a pimp/ho culture—what is often referred to as the
pornification of America—and a billion dollar sex industry built on the
back of pornography, music, entertainment, etc.
Stop feeding the monster. This epidemic is largely one of our own
making, especially in a corporate age where the value placed on human
life takes a backseat to profit. The U.S. is a huge consumer of
trafficked “goods,” with national sporting events such as the Super Bowl
serving as backdrops for the sex industry’s most lucrative seasons.
Each year, for instance, the Super Bowl serves as a “windfall” for sex
traffickers selling minors as young as 13 years old. As one sex
trafficking survivor explained, “They're coming to the Super Bowl not
even to watch football. They’re coming to the Super Bowl to have sex
with women and/or men or children.”
Finally, as the Abell Foundation’s report on trafficking advises: the
police need to do a better job of training on, identifying and
responding to these issues; communities and social services need to do a
better job of protecting runaways, who are the primary targets of
traffickers; legislators need to pass legislation aimed at prosecuting
traffickers and “johns,” the buyers who drive the demand for sex slaves;
hotels need to stop enabling these traffickers, by providing them with
rooms and cover for their dirty deeds; and “we the people” need to stop
hiding our heads in the sand and acting as if there are other matters
more pressing.

Those concerned about the police state in America, which I document in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State,
should be equally concerned about the sex trafficking trade in America.
It is only made possible by the police state’s complicity in turning
average Americans into suspects for minor violations while letting the
real criminals wreak havoc on our communities. No doubt about it, these
are two sides of the same coin.

The Islamic State: Is History Rhyming?

The Islamic State has a library of ancient myths and prophecies it
uses to lure warriors in a march towards the thirteenth century, where
they will defeat the infidels in a great final battle in northern Syria.
Whether they die and are rewarded with paradise or survive to enjoy the
coming Utopia under divine rule, they will be the victors; and this is
the appeal of the Islamic State.
On the 4th of July, Ibrahim ibn Awwad ibn Ibrahim ibn Ali ibn
Muhammad al-Badri, alias Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi took center stage in the
Grand Mosque in Mosul for the first time as Caliph Ibrahim, the Emir of
the Faithful in the Islamic State. He wore the black robes of the
Abbasids Caliphate that reigned from 750 to 1258.
Muslims throughout the world were commanded to move to the caliphate
and pledge their allegiance to Caliph Ibrahim. He had been appointed by
the Shura Council that established the caliphate and had acceded to
their wishes to assume the role of the Successor of Mohammad.
Abu Mohammed Adnani, a spokesman for Islamic State, announced to
Muslims worldwide in a commentary titled “The Promise of God” that other
organizations would have to acknowledge the supremacy of Caliph Ibrahim
or face the wrath of the IS. Caliph Ibrahim declared that the Islamic
State would encompass in five years the lands from India to Southern
Europe. That would include Mullah Omar’s caliphate in Afghanistan, which
has links to Al-Qaeda. Neither organization has pledged its allegiance
to Abu Bakr Baghdadi. The head of the International Union of Muslim
Scholars, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and many
other Islamic scholars are also rejecting the demands of Abu Bakr
Baghdadi to acknowledge his supremacy, but not the Islamic principles
being promoted and not the idea of a caliphate.

The Dictates of History
Caliph Ibrahim offers believers a journey back eight centuries to the
time of the Abbasids Caliphate when Islam was spreading far afield. It
is that lost glory that he is trying to resurrect and impose upon the
world. In keeping with the principles of that distant time, Christians
and Jews are to be given the opportunity to convert, flee, or to pay a
tax and live as second class citizens. All others are to be put to the
sword, their property seized, and their wives and daughters violated and
forced into slavery. Everything is spelled out clearly in the Quran
and in the “Majmu’ al-Fatawa” that was written by Sheikh Taqi ibn
Taymiyyah after the fall of the Abbisids Caliphate. It is this doctrine
that Ibrahim ibn Awwad ibn Ibrahim ibn Ali ibn Muhammad al-Badri studied
as a doctoral student in Islamic studies at the Islamic University in
Baghdad. The doctrine is a part of the curriculum at Saudi-financed,
Salafi-oriented madrasas.
This is why the Islamic State does not hesitate to display the mass
killing of prisoners or speak openly of enslaving Yazidi women and
others. Their practices were approved thirteen centuries ago and are
supported by other Salafists. Time has not modified those ancient
teachings.
Believers are being offered a Utopian promise and the opportunity to
reap revenge upon all of those infidels and false Muslims who have
suppressed righteous Muslims throughout the world and over the
centuries. “Revenge, revenge, revenge,” is the battle cry; and it has
all been heard before.

Sheikh Wahhab Is Still Speaking
By whatever name we call him, the words of the new self-proclaimed
caliph are taken straight out of the mouth of Shaikh Muhammad ibn ‘Abd
al-Wahhab, who walked this road of revolution and reform through much of
the eighteenth century. Because Caliph Ibrahim draws upon historical
sources, he can be replaced with another candidate by the Shura Council
if the need arises, thus representing an institutionalized succession
procedure.
Sheikh Wahhab was a fundamentalist that rejected what he saw as the
corrupting of the Faith. The practices of many Bedouins of praying to
saints, giving a spiritual meaning to particular places, celebrating the
birthday of Muhammad, and constructing monuments were all viewed as
idolatry. True believers accept only God and his word.
The Sheikh invoked the practice of Takfir. The rule states that any
Muslim who fails to uphold the Faith should be put to the sword, his
property seized, and his wives and daughters violated. Under this
practice, Shia and Sufis were not considered to be Muslims and not
deserving of life.
The Turks and Egyptians who came on their pilgrimages to Mecca were
considered to be particularly abhorrent. They traveled in luxury,
smoked, and were declared to be Muslim pretenders. The sect substituted
for nationalism and was directed against the foreign corrupt rulers
before pan-Arab identity began to unite the tribes.
Ibn Saud, the leader of a minor tribal group in the Nejd saw in the
sect a vehicle that could be used to forward his ambitions. Banditry
could be transformed into jihad; and the defeated tribes could be given
the choice of converting to the sect and to benefit in the spoils or
die. If they died in battle, they would enjoy a direct move into
paradise.
What the Wahhabi Sect added to Islamic practice and what appealed to
Ibn Saud was the requirement of the followers to give absolute loyalty
to the political leader. To question the teaching or to fail submitting
to the leader was cause for execution with the loss of property and the
violation of wives and daughters.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the success of Saud was evident
with much of the Arabian Peninsula under his control. His raid upon the
important Shia center of Karbala in 1801 saw an estimated five thousand
Shia slaughtered and their religious sites destroyed. That was followed
two years later by the capture of Mecca and later Medina.
The Ottomans could no longer ignore the carving up of their colonial
territory by a desert tribe. An army of Egyptian troops was sent to
settle the matter. The Wahhabi capital of Dariyah was seized and
destroyed in 1818. Wahhabism receded into the Arabian Desert.
Yet it did not disappear. It remained the core philosophy of the Saud
tribe and would become the core belief of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,
from where it began to spread throughout the Middle East.
Wahhabism arose at a time when the foreign Ottomans were enjoying the
benefits of being colonial rulers, which left a religious and political
vacuum that Wahhabism eventually filled. Exactly one century after it
was defeated, it arose anew with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and its
dismembering by the British and French.
The tribes went from one colonial rule to another without having any
say in what form their lands would take or what type of government would
rule. After World War II, the European rulers were replaced mainly by
autocrats. Where oil was exploited, the autocrats had riches that gave
little benefit to the masses.
The destruction of the Saddam regime and the dismantling of the state
structure by the United States in 2003 created the next vacuum that
would give a new reform movement the opportunity to grow.

Revenge and Utopia
The strength of the Islamic State is that it gives the millions of
impoverished people who see themselves as oppressed the opportunity to
ride their 21st century tanks back to the promised Utopia, where the
religious pure will reap all of the benefits and the disbelievers will
receive their rewards at the end of a modern version of the sword.
If you believe, then all of the events that are converging in Syria
were prophesized by Mohammad thirteen centuries ago, when he told the
future generations that a great battle between Islam and the infidels
would be fought out in northern Syria at the town of Dabiq near the
Turkish border. That is where the old world will come to an end. It will
precede the arrival of the Mahdi and the end of the world. Only the
purest of the pure from the ranks of Muslims will enjoy the new state of
peace and prosperity.
It has all been foretold, and the falling bombs on Islamic State
positions in northern Syria are giving credibility to the ancient script
for those who believe.
All that is needed to fulfill the prophecy is the arrival of an
infidel army. The taunting of the United States by killing American
citizens publically is intended to draw that army onto the battlefield
to unite Muslims against the return of the Crusaders. If the United
States rejects the challenge, it will be declared a coward and will
confirm to followers of the Islamic State their strength. This is sure
to give the movement even more appeal in the eyes of potential
jihadists.

The
three main partners of America’s military alliance in Asia are
Australia, Japan, and South Korea, all of which have the status of Major
Non-NATO Ally.

WASHINGTON, November 15 (Sputnik) — America’s “pivot to Asia” is not
limited to an attempt to consolidate trade partners — it also includes a
return to an American military presence in the Pacific, a move meant
to limit and confront China and Russia.
The three main partners of America’s military alliance in Asia are
Australia, Japan, and South Korea, all of which have the status of Major
Non-NATO Ally. Japan currently hosts almost 50,000 US troops, and
another 28,500 are stationed at 36 installations across South Korea.
The goals of these forces becomes clear when their recent actions are considered together.
In April 2014, an American spy plane was intercepted by a Russian jet over the Sea of Okhotsk. In May 2014, two Global Hawk drones were moved from Guam to Japan with the express purpose of spying on Chinese and North Korean military positions.
Also in May 2014, Japan signed a cooperation accord
with NATO to enhance integration on a variety of issues, including
missile defense and presence in Central Asia. This agreement laid the
groundwork for a “joint anti-piracy drill” in the Gulf of Aden in September, and Exercise Keen Sword,
which began on November 11, and will allow 11,000 US troops to
“practice and coordinate procedures and interoperability in all warfare
disciplines.”
Leading Japan’s military resurgence is Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who, according to the New York Times,
has “increased military spending for the first time in a decade, and
loosened self-imposed restrictions on exporting weapons.” The Times also
notes that “Washington has generally been keen for Japan to take on a
more active military presence in the region to counterbalance China’s
growing might.”
To understand Abe’s aggressive militarism, as seen by his desire to rewrite the Japanese constitution to allow the Japanese military to take a more aggressive role — a move rejected by voters, and his visit to the Yasukuni shrine honoring Nazi war criminals, it is helpful to explore the history of his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi.
After World War II, the American policy in Japan was similar its
policy in Europe — establish a permanent presence and realign
with defeated axis enemies to battle the Soviet Union. In Japan, that
meant rehabilitating war criminal Nobusuke Kishi, who had played a role
in the economic expansion and exploitation of Japan into Manchuria, and
rose to Minister of Munitions in the Japanese government that declared
war on the Allied powers.
Throughout the 1950s, when the Americans were placing puppet
governments throughout Southeast Asia, Kishi was one piece in that game.
Thanks to his close friendship with American business interests, Kishi
received American support as early as 1954 while he was rebuilding the conservative Liberal Party (which later merged with the Democratic Party), and around $10 million a year between 1958 and 1960.
Kishi was also given control
of the powerful post-war reconstruction M-Fund, which he used to enrich
himself. The M-Fund was originally set up by American General William
Marquat, chief of the Supreme Commander of Allied Power’s Economic and
Scientific Section, to rebuild the Japanese economy, but quickly turned
into a way to embezzle the gold stolen by Japanese Nazi’s during the war into far-right campaigns and mafia activities.
In return for this investment, Kishi helped turn Japan into an
American military base for their operations in Vietnam. Now, sixty-five
years later, his grandson is allowing America to continue their occupation of Okinawa
and attempting to line up whatever parts of the Japanese military he is
legally allowed to commit to support the American military buildup
against China.
For its part, South Korea’s close military relationship to America
has existed since the World War II partition agreement with the Soviet
Union. After the Korean War ended, Americans drew down their troops,
but never fully ended their occupation, and thanks to an October, 2014, agreement between the respective Defense Ministers, Americans will exercise “Operational Control” of the 500,000 Korean forces if any hostilities break out with North Korea.
South Korea has also moved closer to NATO thanks to Deputy
Secretary-General of NATO, Alexander Vershbow, who served as Ambassador
to the Republic of Korea in 2005-2008. During his tenure, he helped expand the American military base at Pyeongtaek, Camp Humphries, into the largest Army garrison in Asia.
In his current role at NATO, Vershbow visited South Korea on October 27, 2014, to speak at the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative
Forum. He praised Korea for “contribut[ing] troops to the NATO-led
mission in Afghanistan; lead[ing] one of the most effective Provincial
Reconstruction teams in Parwan, and running an important medical
hospital,” and “pledg[ing] aid towards both the sustainment of the
Afghan National Security Forces and Afghanistan’s future economic
development.”
In addition to the NATO involvement, 200,000 South Korean troops drilled with 12,700 American troops from February to April as part of the “Foal Eagle” and “Key Resolve” exercises.
No one doubts the importance of the economic ties and open markets
between the United States and Asian nations. However, when military ties
are used to aggressively push American troops to China and Russia’s
borders, and trade deals are used to exploit the sick and push an
environmental agenda that puts the profits of polluting industries ahead
of the health of the masses, tensions in the area will only increase,
and instability and unrest will follow.

About Me

ROLAND SAN JUAN was a researcher, management consultant, inventor, a part time radio broadcaster and a publishing director. He died last November 25, 2008 after suffering a stroke. His staff will continue his unfinished work to inform the world of the untold truths. Please read Erick San Juan's articles at: ericksanjuan.blogspot.com This blog is dedicated to the late Max Soliven, a FILIPINO PATRIOT.
DISCLAIMER - We do not own or claim any rights to the articles presented in this blog. They are for information and reference only for whatever it's worth. They are copyrighted to their rightful owners.
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